


it wasn't love

by Sweven



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Fandom, Syndicate (Video Game 2012)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Ficlet, Introspection, M/M, Manipulation, Mentions of animal abuse (as in canon), Post-Roths death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26165632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweven/pseuds/Sweven
Summary: What Jacob felt after Roth's death wasn't love.
Relationships: Evie Frye/Henry Green (background), Jacob Frye/Maxwell Roth
Kudos: 32





	it wasn't love

It wasn't love. 

When Roth had laid dying, lips bloodied and with an unhinged smile on his lips, the crazy old bastard had kissed him. Jacob had baulked with a grimace, equal measures of surprise and anger running through him.

As the fire closed in around him, love had been the farthest thing on Jacob’s mind.

The older man had been strange and unpredictable, but something about him had pulled Jacob in, piqued his interest. Jacob had never been able to work out what the attraction was founded in. Fascination perhaps. A desire to go off the rails and risk everything. A wish to break the chains that bound him and forget the rules for a while. 

Or maybe admiration. The way this man, Starrick's man at first glance, would bite the hand that fed him in such a blatant way, disregarding all the ways the consequences could come tumbling down on him—it was thrilling. Exciting. 

In a sense, Jacob wanted to do the same, wanted to throw caution to the wind, and burn his own bridges with wild abandon. Following Roth on his evening trips had been easy, easier than most things Jacob had done lately. In those moments it hadn’t felt like they’d been the leaders of two opposing gangs, but just two men gallivanting about London, doing whatever they damned well pleased.

It had been as easy as breathing and Jacob found himself hungering for more as soon as Roth had stepped onto his carriage and disappeared into the night. 

But it wasn't love. 

Jacob couldn't put his finger on what it  _ had  _ been, but it hadn't been nothing.

He looked at Evie and Henry, saw the tenderness and quiet flirtation and desire between them. It was growing, day for day. He'd never seen Evie blush like this for anyone and Jacob teased her about it, mercilessly. But what they had was soft and sweet and not at all what Jacob had caught a glimpse of in Roth.

Roth was a pool of dark water, a well where you couldn’t see the bottom. Something alluring and overwhelming at the same time and Jacob had plunged in headfirst.

Now, whenever Jacob saw a crow, he thought of Roth, and anger wasn't all he felt. 

A crow had been a curious thing for Roth to raise. It seemed cruel, to Jacob, to sentence a wild animal to live in a cage, sadly cawing out into the empty hall as life passed it by.

He'd wondered in the beginning, why Roth would trap such a creature. How his heart didn't break a tiny bit with every noise the bird made, every shuffle of wings yearning to be stretched, every scratch on the bars. Some birds were suited for a caged life, could learn to live with it, but this one would never be content like this. 

It wasn't until after the fire that he realised what a perfect metaphor it had been. Roth never did anything half-way, and there was a bitter taste in Jacob’s mouth.

Jacob went back to the Alhambra when the flames had died out and the ashes had cooled. The crowd had dispersed by then, the spectacle had long passed. The building and its streets were empty, and the stark difference from the evening before sent a chill down Jacob’s back.

Walking around the burnt-out theatre without Roth there to taunt him, to entice him, felt wrong somehow. He'd been here before Roth had set up  _ Corvus the Trickster _ in his honour, had lurked in the rafters, watched patiently for Roth to return if he was busy elsewhere in the theatre. He’d sat in the darkened corners of the wooden beams until the man had looked up with a knowing gaze and a smile tugging at his lips.

Being here now without the possibility of Roth looking to the ceiling, his sharp eyes searching for a cloaked figure in the shadows, left an ache deep in his gut, and Jacob didn’t quite know what to do with it.

He found the place where he had left Roth's body. It was gone, of course, and Jacob was embarrassed that he'd expected anything else. He hovered around the spot and imagined that he heard Roth's voice from the stage, calling for him to step forward as the atrocities played out around him.

"Jacob, my dear, come forward!"

The memory of the murders made Jacob shiver. There had been no need for the massacre, had it not been for a deranged madman’s twisted sense of theatricality. It had been personal, and the loathing Jacob felt wasn’t exclusively for Roth. 

Would anything have changed if he had gone to the stage? Would Roth have graced him with one of his smiles, one wide enough that it would have tugged at his scar? Would he have kissed him then, when Jacob joined him on the stage bathed in bright light, in front of everyone, just because he been able to? Because Jacob would have let him? Because it would have been another way to spit in the face of what was expected?

The cries of the children as the building burned around them still rang in Jacob’s ears. He had looked up at Roth on the rooftop, seen the disgust and disapproval in the man’s face before he had turned away with a sneer. Jacob could still taste the sour note of hatred on his tongue as he desperately helped the children to safety.

The simmering feeling in Jacob’s gut stayed with him even as he whirled around and left the ash-covered stage.

It was regret.

Anger.

Sadness. 

At Roth for weaving such a beautiful lie.

At himself for believing it.

It was something that Jacob couldn't quite define.

But it wasn't love.

It couldn't be.


End file.
